LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Let’s be honest: any moron can crap out an iPhone case. Sketch out a quick model in CAD, send a few emails to someone in Shenzhen, and just a couple weeks later, a buttload of cheap plastic iPhone cases will hit your door. The fact that it’s literally this easy to make an iPhone case is what makes reporting on iPhone cases just so tedious: they are literally a multi-billion dollar industry fueled by brain farts.

Which is why I like Sculpteo, and was charmed as they lead me through a demonstration of their service. Unlike most of the bozos at CES, they aren’t hiding the fact that any moron can crap out an iPhone case. In fact, that’s their whole business: they want you to be that moron.

This sexy bamboo case could be yours right after you get your hands on the iPhone 5.

Grove, maker of quality bamboo cases for the iPhone, has just begun pre-orders for its new iPhone 5 case. The design of this case is milled from a solid block of bamboo and sanded/oiled by hand. You have the option to get a custom engraving too.

What do you do if you’re a medical technology startup while waiting for the FDA to approve your flagship iPhone-based product?

If you’re AliveCor, you launch a veterinary version of it.

The product in question is AliveCor’s iPhone ECG heart monitor, which the company showed off nearly two years ago, at the CES in 2011. The device allows a medical professional to assess a patient’s heart rhythm, providing more data than a stethoscope or manual check of their pulse. Although the device has broad potential, it has yet to be approved by the FDA.

In one of the more meta examples of self-referential design, this Kickstarter project plans to make iPhone cases out of – get this – wood from Apple trees. Each skin is laser-cut and matte finished, less than 1 mm thick, and attaches to the back of an iPhone 4 or 4S with an adhesive sticker.

Project creator Robert Magno (one letter combination away from being even more meta-fruit-like) wanted to keep things simple, a very Apple-like stance, to be sure.

Available exclusively at the Apple store starting today are these stylish new snap cases for iPhone 4S forged from a partnership between LA’s Incase and New York fashion house Marc by Marc Jacobs.

The Marc by Marc Jacobs Snap Case series is the first such design collaboration between these two leading internationally renowned brands. What they’ve done is couple the tough protectiveness of Incase’s hardshell snap-on cases with Marc by Marc Jacobs’ eye-catching feminine graphics.

There have been a handful of technologies touted over the past few years that would remove (or dramatically reduce) the need to carry our credit/debit cards, loyalty cards, and even cash. For the past couple of years, NFC has been the technology of choice for turning our phones into digital wallets. Google and RIM have built NFC support into their respective mobile OSes and a handful of manufacturers have built NFC phones, but the technology hasn’t lived up to the hype.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD / iWORLD 2012 — There are no shortage of iPhone cases being showcased here at Macworld/iWorld 2012, but only one grabbed my attention at last night’s media preview. It was a case called Flygrip, and it promises to keep your iPhone in hand so you can do other things without worrying about dropping your valuable device.

Macworld/iWorld marks the launch of FlyGrip, and I was given a unit to test out.

It’s difficult to find stuff made on U.S. soil these days. Heck, sometimes it seems like nothing is made here. But that’s not true of the elite, exo-skeletal Rockform Rokbed iPhone 4 case ($80), intricately machined from a solid block of aluminum: It’s designed and manufactured in the good ol’ U.S.A. (and it’s not shy about saying so), in Orange County, California by one of the most unlikely outfits to make an iPhone case — the motorcycle fanatics at Two Brothers Racing.